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Botanical natural medicinal products and dietary supplements are utilized globally for their positive impacts on health and wellness. However, the effectiveness and safety of botanical products can be compromised by unintentional or intentional adulteration. The presence of adulterated botanical ingredients in the global market has been documented in the published literature but a key question, namely what the extent of adulteration is, remains to be answered. This review aims to estimate the prevalence of adulteration in preparations made from black cohosh rhizome, echinacea root or herb, elder berry, ginkgo leaf, and turmeric root/rhizome. According to the information provided in the 78 publications retrieved for this paper, 818 of 2995 samples were reported to be adulterated and/or mislabeled. Ginkgo leaf samples (n = 533) had the highest adulteration rate with 56.7%, followed by black cohosh rhizome (n = 322) samples with 42.2%, echinacea root/herb (n = 200) with 28.5%, elder berry (n = 695) with 17.1%, and turmeric root/rhizome (n = 1247) with 16.5%. Products sold as licensed or registered herbal medicines were found to have a lower risk of adulteration compared to products sold as dietary/food supplements. The data show that the adulteration rate substantially differs from one ingredient to the other. Due to the significant limitations of the available data upon which the estimated extent of adulteration is based, and the rapidly changing botanical dietary supplement market, conclusions from the five herbs examined in this publication cannot be applied to other botanicals traded in the global market. However, the data clearly show that a substantial portion of the botanical dietary supplements do not contain what is claimed on their labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the 40-year history of HerbalGram, highlighting its evolution alongside the herbal medicine movement and the contributions of key figures, and includes the publication's origins, early contributors, and the challenges of distributing information in its early days.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the annual HerbalGram Herb Market Report for 2023, highlighting a 4.4% increase in retail sales of herbal dietary supplements in the U.S.

The article offers information on the American Botanical Council, a nonprofit organization that continues its commitment to science-based herbal medicine education and an authentic, sustainable, and regenerative global value network. It discusses ABC's Sustainable Herbs Program, which issued a toolkit in 2021 to help industry members become sustainable, and the launch of Toolkit 2.0 in early 2022.